Greetings from India to all
First of all, I would like to thank the community for the effort it puts in and users like us get the benefit. I started using linux about 5 years ago and today I personally use Fedora and all other six users in my SME company use Centos. And, I am proud to say that today we only a single Windows installation in our small office (for ISP troubleshooting, even though most of the use is Desktop.
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB RAM, 200 GB HDD, 17" Screen, Touchpad, Integrated Webcam and Full Multimedia, so that the system can double as a Personal Entertainment Device High End Audio/Video on long trips). I will need to run Centos & Windows virtualized with Xen or some other hypervisor, for my some of my office applications
I have browsed lots of sites & mailing lists, even some linux certified sellers, but all seem to show either outdated hardware or low multimedia.
I would like to know of such a Laptop which has linux drivers for all its hardware, even if scattered on the net and someone is using such a system successfully for similar applications. I could perhaps outsource the driver compilation & installation to someone remotely, as I do not know much about compiling & troubleshooting Hardware problems.
My Windows usage is rare & for only a couple of programs for Equity & Commodity Trade Charting and works in hypervisor, though I have not tested it yet.
I do not now want to revert to Windows for other applications like Multimedia, because I have been quite happy with Fedora Multimedia on my Desktop. Only issue is choosing the right hardware for which drivers are available & outsourcing to someone to build driver rpms for me & others for that particular laptop. After that, at least one high end model will be available for other people like myself.
Hope the Fedora Gurus will give some guidance about selecting such a laptop for which full hardware support can be built in the community....I will gladly pay someone reasonable amount to do it for me and build it into the Fedora code.
With best regards and my thanks. Sanjay.
Sanjay Arora wrote:
Greetings from India to all
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB
google is your friend...
http://www.linux.org/hardware/laptop.html
http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Sanjay Arora sanjay.k.arora@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings from India to all
First of all, I would like to thank the community for the effort it puts in and users like us get the benefit. I started using linux about 5 years ago and today I personally use Fedora and all other six users in my SME company use Centos. And, I am proud to say that today we only a single Windows installation in our small office (for ISP troubleshooting, even though most of the use is Desktop.
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB RAM, 200 GB HDD, 17" Screen, Touchpad, Integrated Webcam and Full Multimedia, so that the system can double as a Personal Entertainment Device High End Audio/Video on long trips). I will need to run Centos & Windows virtualized with Xen or some other hypervisor, for my some of my office applications
I have browsed lots of sites & mailing lists, even some linux certified sellers, but all seem to show either outdated hardware or low multimedia.
I would like to know of such a Laptop which has linux drivers for all its hardware, even if scattered on the net and someone is using such a system successfully for similar applications. I could perhaps outsource the driver compilation & installation to someone remotely, as I do not know much about compiling & troubleshooting Hardware problems.
My Windows usage is rare & for only a couple of programs for Equity & Commodity Trade Charting and works in hypervisor, though I have not tested it yet.
I do not now want to revert to Windows for other applications like Multimedia, because I have been quite happy with Fedora Multimedia on my Desktop. Only issue is choosing the right hardware for which drivers are available & outsourcing to someone to build driver rpms for me & others for that particular laptop. After that, at least one high end model will be available for other people like myself.
Hope the Fedora Gurus will give some guidance about selecting such a laptop for which full hardware support can be built in the community....I will gladly pay someone reasonable amount to do it for me and build it into the Fedora code.
I'd say get a Dell, everything worked on the F8 install I did but they have that stupid dell media direct button which will hose your install in seconds.....
Max
On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 17:29 -0400, max bianco wrote:
I'd say get a Dell, everything worked on the F8 install I did but they have that stupid dell media direct button which will hose your install in seconds.....
If you remove the hidden restore partition, does that button still cause self destruction?
On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 01:34 +0530, Sanjay Arora wrote:
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB RAM, 200 GB HDD, 17" Screen, Touchpad, Integrated Webcam and Full Multimedia, so that the system can double as a Personal Entertainment Device High End Audio/Video on long trips). I will need to run Centos & Windows virtualized with Xen or some other hypervisor, for my some of my office applications
If it's CentOS you're interested in, you're on the wrong list. But I bought a fairly new Asus laptop at the end of last year, and just about everything works on it (haven't tried firewire, the multi-card reader only manages to read SD-RAM cards, the webcam isn't usable). Using Ubuntu on the same laptop, the webcam does work.
Before I bought the computer, I spent quite a lot of time researching the models that I could buy locally. What hardware they had, and what was known to work or not work on Linux. I'd say that the main things to look for would be:
Graphics chipset Wireless chipset Card reader chipset Type of webcam Audio chipset (not sure if this is the big problem it used to be)
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au wrote:
On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 17:29 -0400, max bianco wrote:
I'd say get a Dell, everything worked on the F8 install I did but they have that stupid dell media direct button which will hose your install in seconds.....
If you remove the hidden restore partition, does that button still cause self destruction?
I haven't tried it again but I used the whole drive on install of fedora originally and again to reinstall, so best guess is its in some sort of built onto the board mechanism, i'd try it again but my gf probably wouldn't appreciate me doing that on purpose a second time just to test a theory. I am pretty sure its built into the MOBO though.
Max
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 19:33:19 -0400, max bianco maximilianbianco@gmail.com wrote:
I haven't tried it again but I used the whole drive on install of fedora originally and again to reinstall, so best guess is its in some sort of built onto the board mechanism, i'd try it again but my gf probably wouldn't appreciate me doing that on purpose a second time just to test a theory. I am pretty sure its built into the MOBO though.
How did you check that? Drives have a way of reserving space at the end, that the installer wouldn't see. Unless you checked for this reserved space explicitly, it wouldn't be noticeable. For PATA drives you can use the program at: http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/setmax.c I don't know if the same feature is available for SATA or SCSI drives, but if it is you will need a different tool to check them.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 1:48 AM, Tim Evans tkevans@tkevans.com wrote:
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB
google is your friend...
Google is indeed a friend. I was ignorant before I approached friend Google.....I was utterly confused after ;-))
With regards. Sanjay.
Sanjay,
I've had very satisfactory results with a Toshiba Satellite A100 and FC8. I can play back all commonplace media types (visit http://fedorasolved.net for HOW-TOs on installing optimized graphic drivers and multimedia support). FC8 recognized and supported everything on my system, and set up mounts for the Windows partition in case you need to store and retrieve stuff there.
Since I installed FC8 and did the necessary post-installation work (installing support for different media types), I haven't booted into Windows at all and have no plans to go back to Windows. So far, I've found a Linux-based solution for every need.
Just make sure you choose a webcam of a mainstream brand and model, to be sure you'll be able to use it (same advice applies for other external devices, except those that use generic drivers).
Also, if you are going to keep a small Windows installation (there are times when you'll need it - the Toshiba hardware utilities are all Windows-based) then install Windows first before Linux and allow around 15 Gig to give you plenty of room for the few needs in question). Then install Linux after (FC makes the system dual-bootable without any problem - I suppose CentOS would too).
Hope this helps,
David
On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:44 AM, Sanjay Arora sanjay.k.arora@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 1:48 AM, Tim Evans tkevans@tkevans.com wrote:
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB
google is your friend...
Google is indeed a friend. I was ignorant before I approached friend Google.....I was utterly confused after ;-))
With regards. Sanjay.
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 08:00 +0930, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 01:34 +0530, Sanjay Arora wrote:
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB RAM, 200 GB HDD, 17" Screen, Touchpad, Integrated Webcam and Full Multimedia, so that the system can double as a Personal Entertainment Device High End Audio/Video on long trips). I will need to run Centos & Windows virtualized with Xen or some other hypervisor, for my some of my office applications
If it's CentOS you're interested in, you're on the wrong list. But I bought a fairly new Asus laptop at the end of last year, and just about everything works on it (haven't tried firewire, the multi-card reader only manages to read SD-RAM cards, the webcam isn't usable). Using Ubuntu on the same laptop, the webcam does work.
Whatever happened to the "lunchboxes", that used much cheaper standard gear inside, with a built-in LED screen and a fold down almost REAL keyboard? Cheap to fix, just a huge honking battery to add to the weight was the only real issue. Anyone using one successfully? Ric
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 4:00 AM, Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au wrote:
On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 01:34 +0530, Sanjay Arora wrote:
However, I am in a fix now. I need to buy a high end laptop, (4 GB RAM, 200 GB HDD, 17" Screen, Touchpad, Integrated Webcam and Full Multimedia, so that the system can double as a Personal Entertainment Device High End Audio/Video on long trips). I will need to run Centos & Windows virtualized with Xen or some other hypervisor, for my some of my office applications
If it's CentOS you're interested in, you're on the wrong list.
As I said in my OP, I use Fedora, presently 8 (However I do tend to upgrade to new versions as soon as they are available. However, my Company runs Centos 5 & Windows and I wish to run them under virtualization.
But I bought a fairly new Asus laptop at the end of last year, and just about everything works on it (haven't tried firewire, the multi-card reader only manages to read SD-RAM cards, the webcam isn't usable). Using Ubuntu on the same laptop, the webcam does work.
That's the problem with the literature out there. Just like your post, users have tried & reported various hardware and posted their results. Sometimes they have outlined workarounds & sometimes an alternate linux versions where their hardware works.
No one points out a version where software works on the hardware out of the box. I think, each community should at least adopt at least 3 Models (low-end, medium-end & high-end) of any one manufacturer and support them. If average users get a model supported out of the box, buyers like us would definitely end up buying more laptops fully supported by their distros.
This may even create a Virtuous Circle where seeing incremental sales through support of a linux distro the manufacturers may even become more open to co-operate with the community.
With best regards. Sanjay.
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 07:33:19PM -0400, max bianco wrote:
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au wrote:
On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 17:29 -0400, max bianco wrote:
I'd say get a Dell, everything worked on the F8 install I did but they have that stupid dell media direct button which will hose your install in seconds.....
If you remove the hidden restore partition, does that button still cause self destruction?
I haven't tried it again but I used the whole drive on install of fedora originally and again to reinstall, so best guess is its in some sort of built onto the board mechanism, i'd try it again but my gf probably wouldn't appreciate me doing that on purpose a second time just to test a theory. I am pretty sure its built into the MOBO though.
It's not about the restore partition, but about the hidden partition that contains MediaDirect, and the swizzling that occurs when you press the MediaDirect button to un-hide that partition, boot from it, hide it again, etc.
The best answer to this is to wipe the initial hunk of the disk (or the whole disk if you're really paranoid) with zeros prior to installing Linux. This is easily accomplished by booting a LiveCD in rescue mode, then doing a:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=100
or thereabouts. MediaDirect is a useful feature, but the authors never anticipated dealing with Linux in a dual-boot scenario. They are actively trying to figure out how to keep MD from messing up your partition table when Linux is installed. I expect that to be fixed in a future version of MD. Until then, wipe the initial part of the disk before installing Linux.
<shameless plug> As for "what machine should I use?" Given what you describe as your needs, I might recommend the Dell Precision M6300 which happens to be certified with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 already, so you know it'll work with CentOS. </shameless plug>
Thanks, Matt
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 01:22:05PM -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 19:33:19 -0400, max bianco maximilianbianco@gmail.com wrote:
I haven't tried it again but I used the whole drive on install of fedora originally and again to reinstall, so best guess is its in some sort of built onto the board mechanism, i'd try it again but my gf probably wouldn't appreciate me doing that on purpose a second time just to test a theory. I am pretty sure its built into the MOBO though.
How did you check that? Drives have a way of reserving space at the end, that the installer wouldn't see. Unless you checked for this reserved space explicitly, it wouldn't be noticeable. For PATA drives you can use the program at: http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/setmax.c I don't know if the same feature is available for SATA or SCSI drives, but if it is you will need a different tool to check them.
Newest versions of MediaDirect (version 3 and higher IIRC) don't use the Host Protected Area of the drives anymore. They use partition table swizzling code to hide/unhide the MD partition.
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Matt Domsch Matt_Domsch@dell.com wrote:
Newest versions of MediaDirect (version 3 and higher IIRC) don't use the Host Protected Area of the drives anymore. They use partition table swizzling code to hide/unhide the MD partition.
Yes - I recently heard of the MD disaster and have been ultra-careful not to press the button when the power's off. Just yesterday I reinstalled my OS, but just before (and after) I pressed the button - it just fired up GRUB (whew). This is a vostro 1500 with MD 3.3.
Chris
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7:37 AM, Matt Domsch Matt_Domsch@dell.com wrote:
<shameless plug> As for "what machine should I use?" Given what you describe as your needs, I might recommend the Dell Precision M6300 which happens to be certified with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 already, so you know it'll work with CentOS. </shameless plug>
Thanks for the info Matt!
However, since you seem to work in Dell, I would suggest you send a copy of that shameless plug to your CTO/Strategy Office ;-)
Out here in India, the minute you say linux, you feel Dell Sales Rep's interest in your sale vanishing.
And, "Sorry...we do not support Linux, however we'll get back to you", is the standard Goodbye phrase. Dell really needs to know that Dell supports Linux ;-)) I hope you will let Dell know ;-))
Thanks for the tip though. I'll check out the model in detail.
With best regards & thanks. Sanjay.
-
Bruno Wolff III -
Chris Mohler -
Matt Domsch -
max -
Ric Moore -
Sanjay Arora -
Tim -
Tim Evans -
Totally Burned